Tag: exploration

Key thing about taking an adventure doesn’t have to do with going to the most remote place on the planet or most talked about. The spirit of an adventure is exploring somewhere new, even if it’s just new to you.

So for me and my husband this past Valentine’s day, our date consisted of a wintry walk through a local park in Pennsylvania. While I had explored this place before, something about the light slow drifting down made the walk positively magical. The cold pinks your cheeks, chills your ears, and the fluffy snowflakes clung to my hair, my clothes–everything. But with so few people on the trails, the pale accumulations were pristine, and the snowfall didn’t accumulate so much as to deter our walk, just make it a bit more treacherous. Of course, that just makes it all the more thrilling.

One of the places that’s high on the tourism charts is Diamond’s Head in Hawaii. We were on Oahu, specifically staying in Waikiki for my cousin’s wedding in August of 2014. And me being a pale Irish kid had the genius idea of doing hikes since the beach wouldn’t work well for my tender complexion. This was a lovely lesson in different terrain.

Beautiful, right? Half the time I spent applying sunscreen. Little did I realize, a lot of the hikes through Hawaii involve open sun with little tree cover. So thankfully this was just a two hour hike, but I kept leaving my husband in the dust to cling to what minimal shade I could find. I’d wait for him in the shadow and then scamper off to find the next bit of shade.